Do TV shows have too many unnecessary subplots compared to movies?

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My friends try to get me into TV shows more, but I find that they just aren't as focused as movies plot wise, and just have unnecessary subplots, that do not pay of well, or built into the main plot in any way.

For example, I tried watching How to Get Away with Murder, the first two seasons, and when it starts off, so far the murder plot is really promising. *But they have these subplots which don't seem to have anything to do with the murder plot. *One of the co-conspirators in the murder, for example, has a subplot where she is worried that her fiance might be gay. * How is this going to build into the murder plot and have a pay off. *I was betting that it was not going to, and be completely forgotten about by the next season... *And it was.

Or in the show The Shield for example, the show is about corrupt cops and the honest cops trying to bust them.* Pretty good start it was off to.* But then when you get more into the subplots, one of them for example, is the police Captain, if I remember his rank correct, has a new gf and they are exploring rape fantasies together.* What does this have to do with the main plot of catching the main crooked cop characters?* Nothing.

Or in the show Dexter, one of the crime lab characters, has a long lost daughter he finds out about and wants to build a relationship with her.* But what does this have to with the main plot about a crime scene specialist who is a serial killer?* Absolutely nothing.

Where as movies do not waste time with these kinds of subplots.* But maybe there are better shows out there that do not have these types of subplots?* Or do they all have them pretty much?



They have to. They're filling dozens of even hundreds of hours compared to, like, two. The ones with very few are usually both a) not that long-running and b) among the greatest shows of all time.

Aside from that, the word "unnecessary" is revealing a lot here, because a lot of people watch shows for the characters, and often those subplots are only "unnecessary" if you're not interested in that.



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Or in the show The Shield for example, the show is about corrupt cops and the honest cops trying to bust them.* Pretty good start it was off to.* But then when you get more into the subplots, one of them for example, is the police Captain, if I remember his rank correct, has a new gf and they are exploring rape fantasies together.* What does this have to do with the main plot of catching the main crooked cop characters?* Nothing.
In this particular instance it is to establish the gray areas of morality. So like, the guy is one of the good ones but in his free time he is paying hookers to act out violent rape. Doesn't seem so good now? Which then makes you reassess the crookedness of the bad cops. Are they really crooked? Or are they operating in the gray area, too?

You can sometimes squeeze that into a movie but TV shows do a really great job of allowing you to draw in these gray areas to make you think about the absoluteness of the main plot.
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Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh okay, well it's just a lot of time was devoted to that rape fantasy plot, showing the sex scenes entirely, when they could have just summed it up in two minutes, couldn't they?

But would movies be better if they actually had these types of subplots though,or would they be unfocused? If you were to take a movie like say The Fugitive for example, if the U.S. Marshall character had a subplot where he thought his wife was gay, would that enrich the character, or would viewers ask, what does this have to do with the main crime story in anyway?



There's a saying that movies are about plot and TV is about characters. This is by necessity: if you like a character, you'll watch them simply react in different scenarios for hundreds of episodes, because you get to know them and get satisfaction out of that, to the point where it can actually become funny or entertaining to simply see them do a thing and think "oh that's just like them." If you find this stuff unnecessary, it's because you're approaching shows as if they're only about plot, and thus aren't really watching them for the same reasons the show's viewers are.

There are, of course, really stupid subplots that don't even achieve the above, but generally that's the divide here. If someone approaches stories like mere plots or puzzles or a series of events, or if they, uh, have a habit of expecting characters to behave in purely rational or robotic ways, then yeah, I'm sure all this stuff seems superfluous. But that's a statement about the viewer, not the show.



Oh okay, well it's just a lot of time was devoted to that rape fantasy plot, showing the sex scenes entirely, when they could have just summed it up in two minutes, couldn't they?
I mean, with this logic, why show anything? Why not just say "the Hobbits went to Mt. Doom"? It's different to see something depicted.

But would movies be better if they actually had these types of subplots though,or would they be unfocused? If you were to take a movie like say The Fugitive for example, if the U.S. Marshall character had a subplot where he thought his wife was gay, would that enrich the character, or would viewers ask, what does this have to do with the main crime story in anyway?
This was already answered: comparing the use of time and character development in a two-hour movie to a 100-hour narrative in a show doesn't make sense. You might as well compare a statue to a sonnet.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh okay, well I guess I would be more into the subplots if the had built towards bigger pay offs, but they are often forgotten about or unresolved, or do not go anywhere much though.



"Do not go anywhere" sounds like "unnecessary," addressed here:

Aside from that, the word "unnecessary" is revealing a lot here, because a lot of people watch shows for the characters, and often those subplots are only "unnecessary" if you're not interested in that.
Sometimes the place they "go" is "understanding the character better." If it feels pointless, maybe it's because you're treating movies like a chronicle of events rather than the character studies they almost invariably are.

TV shows are more like actual friendships. If your friend told you something happened to them you wouldn't get mad at them because there wasn't a payoff. You'd just understand them a little better and care about it simply because you cared about them. If you don't care about the characters in a TV show, a lot of it's going to feel like wasted time, so you should probably stop watching.



For as long as I can remember, most sitcoms have a "B" storyline in each episode that is blended into the primary storyline of each episode. One example that comes immediately to mind is The Brady Bunch...even though there were a lot of episodes centered specifically around the kids, there was always a subplot, usually revolving around an event the rest of the family was preparing for.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh okay, sitcoms I thought are different though, because the subplots leads to lots of laughs still if the gags are funny. When they try to do subplots in serious shows, the pay offs aren't that good a lot of the time it seems, especially if the it's forgotten about.



I feel like you just keep substituting different terms that mean the same thing. You said "unnecessary" and I noted that you thinking character development is "unnecessary" merely reflects your priorities as a viewer. Then you switched to "do not go anywhere," which I noted is the same idea. And now you've moved on to "the pay offs aren't that good." Sounds like they're all the same idea to me. It's all the same presupposition about what a show is supposed to be and why someone would watch them.



Movie Forums Squirrel Jumper
Oh sorry I meant unnecessary as in does not go anywhere, or the pay offs aren't that good.

One show I can think of that does it better than most is Breaking Bad. The show has a few subplots throughout, but each one pays off very well in the story.

The only subplot that felt unnecessary was the kleptomania subplot in the first season. But all the rest payed off well, compared to other shows, where it feels like they are forgotten about, or they don't know how to pay of them off.

So I would say Breaking Bad does it well. This is just my theory, but I think with Breaking Bad, they only bring in supporting characters when they are necessary, where as other shows, the actors playing the supporting characters, are contracted to have too much screen time, and so they have to give them more plot to fill contracts.

Where as Breaking Bad seemed to have found away around such a contract and only writes the characters in when necessary. Unless I am wrong?



Oh sorry I meant unnecessary as in does not go anywhere, or the pay offs aren't that good.
Er, yes...isn't this exactly what I just said?
You said "unnecessary" and I noted that you thinking character development is "unnecessary" merely reflects your priorities as a viewer. Then you switched to "do not go anywhere," which I noted is the same idea. And now you've moved on to "the pay offs aren't that good." Sounds like they're all the same idea to me.
You're repeating my own observation back to me, which is odd enough, but it's odder still that you're repeating it back to me as if it were an explanation.

The observation I'm making is that you keep saying "Oh, I meant..." and then you go on to say the exact same thing you said before, slightly rephrased, without actually addressing the underlying idea: that you're apparently watching TV shows for plot rather than characterization, which is why you think of these subplots focusing on character as "unnecessary" things that don't "pay off" or "go anywhere." They do pay off, and they go somewhere: just nowhere you want shows to go, apparently, since you seem uninterested in these forms of character development.

One show I can think of that does it better than most is Breaking Bad. The show has a few subplots throughout, but each one pays off very well in the story.
Some don't, but yes, this is one of the shows I was thinking of when I said this:
The ones with very few are usually both a) not that long-running and b) among the greatest shows of all time.
Notice that both a) and b) describe Breaking Bad: it only has about 60 episodes.

The only subplot that felt unnecessary was the kleptomania subplot in the first season.
...which is a character-based subplot that tells us more about Marie (and, in turn, more about Hank).

Where as Breaking Bad seemed to have found away around such a contract and only writes the characters in when necessary. Unless I am wrong?
No, you're not wrong, except by bringing this example up as if I didn't specifically carve out the exceptions above several posts ago (with this exact show in mind when I did, as it so happens). So we're doing the usual routine where the question is almost immediately in a perfectly satisfactory way, but you nevertheless ask the question again several times and have to be walked through all the elements that were in the first answer, for some reason.

I'm closing this thread, and will continue closing threads the moment they fall into this predictable, inevitable loop where replies are not read or absorbed.